Festival of Life 2010

I just got back to Greece after a hectic 2 weeks in the UK to firstly watch my brother get married and secondly to be present at the 7th Annual Festival of Life in London.
My feet barely touched the ground. We flew into London from Athens on Friday the 10th Sept after a long and painful drive/bus/train/walk to the airport and almost
missing the flight. The wedding 2 days later, was a beautiful event with lots of dancing (mostly by my daighter) and catching up with friends and family. Then a few days of relaxing before jetting off to Slovakia for a second wedding reception and a 4 night stay in a beautiful if not scary little lodge with a proud hunter of an owner showing off his prey at every opportunity, not mine or anyones cup of tea but interesting all the same.
The final leg of my trip was the Festival of Life at Conway Hall which i missed out on last year because Eleftheria was still little and i wasn't ready to face my public just yet.
Anyhow this year was a fabulous day. As always i met lots of new and wonderful people and caught up with some old friends.
My little table was constantly buzzing with people trying our Raw Olives and sampling dips like Raw vegan Taramasalata, Tzatziki and Olive and Almond Pate all available in my book The Raw Greek. My ears were ringing with the hum of Mmmm Mmmm Mmming from the happy tasters.
Our Unsalted Kalamata Olives and Lightly salted Throuba Olives went down a treat and customers left happy and satisfied with their bags full of Raw Greek goodies.

Our new Dry Greek Figs were also well received for their fresh, soft deliciousness.
The beauty of Raw Food Festivals is that you get to see and try other peoples products, we were lucky enough to have some raw ice-cream from Inspiral, the familiar raw chocolate, and to my delight Kale Chips, which are going to be available in the UK very soon watch this space for where and when to get yours.
I wish the day could have lasted longer but unfortunately all good things have to come to an end. So until next year...

Fruit Roll Up Anyone?

When I was a kid I loved sour sweets especially Haribo Tangfastic Sour mix and Sour Cherries. I’ve just discovered something even better, it is 1000 times healthier than standard sweets, contains no sugar or other sweetener and is 100% natural, easy to make and raw; homemade sour cherry fruit roll ups mmm mmm mmmmmmmm.

Oh my god the sourness is out of this world and will send your taste buds into a frenzy.

It is coming to the end of cherry season and my mother in-law called me over to her place the other day to give me a tub full of sour cherries. When I was pregnant I would eat them as they were straight from the tree but since having the baby I can only handle about 5 in one sitting. When she gave them to me she also told me that the trees were full of sour cherries and that if we didn’t pick them and eat them in the next couple of days they would fall off the trees and go to waste, so with a bag in hand I went out and picked as many as I possibly could in the lunchtime heat. I figured I’d make something with them, perhaps juice or ice-cream. When I got home it took me an hour to pit them and while pitting them I was trying to think of what I could do with so many sour cherries in such a short time (they spoil very quickly once off the tree). The only thing I could come up with was fruit leathers. That is what I set out to do.

How to make fruit leathers or fruit roll ups

Take any fruit of your choice; some of my favourites are pear, apricot, peach, banana and orange juice, Galia melon and not forgetting sour cherry. You will need about 500ml of blended fruit for each Excalibur dehydrator tray, so provided your dehydrator has the space fill a blender jug full of fruit and blend until everything is liquefied (you may need to shake the blender a little to get it going). Once you have done this take your dehydrator trays with teflex sheets and pour about a third of the mixture onto each tray, using a spatula spread the mixture as flat and smoothly as possible. Do the same with the remaining mixture until you have no more fruit left. Put the trays into the dehydrator and dehydrate on about 125oC for about 12 hours, once the fruit has solidified enough you can carefully peel away the teflex sheets and dehydrate for a further2-4 hours. When the sheets are ready remove the trays from the dehydrator and using a pair of kitchen scissors cut the sheets into strips as thick and as long as you like and roll them up. You can store the roll ups in the fridge and this will also make them crispy and easier to chew and eat.

I made my first batch of sour cherry roll-ups neat and boy are they sour, I loved them so much I went back to my mother in-laws the following day and stripped all the trees of their cherries. The second time I added some apple to make the sour cherries go further and add a little sweetness. I used 1 kg pitted sour cherries and 500g cored, peeled granny smith apples, but you can add as much as 50% apple if you prefer. The apple didn’t overpower the cherries at all and the colour and flavour was as intense as without the apple.